Stanisław Marcin Ulam was a Polish scientist in the fields of mathematics and nuclear physics. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, discovered the concept of the cellular automaton, invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, and suggested nuclear pulse propulsion. In pure and applied mathematics, he proved some theorems and proposed several conjectures.
Gian-Carlo Rota was an Italian-American mathematician and philosopher. He spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in combinatorics, functional analysis, probability theory, and phenomenology.
Peter David Lax is a Hungarian-born American mathematician and Abel Prize laureate working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics.
Nicholas Constantine Metropolis was a Greek-American physicist.
Robert Fox Bacher was an American nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project. Born in Loudonville, Ohio, Bacher obtained his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan, writing his 1930 doctoral thesis under the supervision of Samuel Goudsmit on the Zeeman effect of the hyperfine structure of atomic levels. After graduate work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he accepted a job at Columbia University. In 1935 he accepted an offer from Hans Bethe to work with him at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It was there that Bacher collaborated with Bethe on his book Nuclear Physics. A: Stationary States of Nuclei (1936), the first of three books that would become known as the "Bethe Bible".
Frank Thomson "Tom" Leighton is the CEO of Akamai Technologies, the company he co-founded with the late Daniel Lewin in 1998. As one of the world's preeminent authorities on algorithms for network applications and cybersecurity, Dr. Leighton discovered a solution to free up web congestion using applied mathematics and distributed computing.
Jordan Carson Mark was a Canadian-American mathematician best known for his work on developing nuclear weapons for the United States at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mark joined the Manhattan Project in 1945, and continued to work at Los Alamos under the leadership of Norris Bradbury after World War II ended. He became the leader of the Theoretical Division at the laboratory in 1947, a position he held until 1973. He oversaw the development of new weapons, including the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s. On the hydrogen bomb project he was able to bring together experts like Edward Teller, Stanislaw Ulam and Marshall Holloway despite their personal differences.
Chen Shiyi is a Chinese mechanical engineer and physicist. He is the President of South University of Science and Technology of China.
Carlos Castillo-Chavez is a Mexican-American mathematician who was Regents Professor and Joaquín Bustoz Jr. Professor of Mathematical Biology at Arizona State University. Castillo-Chavez was founder and the Executive Director of the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) and the Institute for Strengthening the Understanding of Mathematics and Science. For 2019, Castillo-Chavez was Provost Visiting Professor in the Applied Mathematics Division and Data Science Initiative at Brown University. Castillo-Chavez retired from Arizona State University at the end of spring 2020.
Charles Rogers Doering was a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is notable for his research that is generally focused on the analysis of stochastic dynamical systems arising in biology, chemistry and physics, to systems of nonlinear partial differential equations. Recently he had been focusing on fundamental questions in fluid dynamics as part of the $1M Clay Institute millennium challenge concerning the regularity of solutions to the equations of fluid dynamics. With J. D. Gibbon, he notably co-authored the book Applied Analysis of the Navier-Stokes Equations, published by Cambridge University Press. He died on May 15, 2021.
Cliff Joslyn is an American mathematician, cognitive scientist, and cybernetician. He is currently the Chief Knowledge Scientist and Team Lead for Mathematics of Data Science at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, USA, and Visiting Professor of Systems Science at Binghamton University (SUNY).
Robert Davis Richtmyer was an American physicist, mathematician, educator, author, and musician.
Burton Wendroff is an American applied mathematician known for his contributions to the development of numerical methods for the solution of hyperbolic partial differential equations. The Lax–Wendroff method for the solution of hyperbolic PDE is named for Wendroff.
Lee Aaron Segel (1932–2005) was an applied mathematician primarily at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is particularly known for his work in the spontaneous appearance of order in convection, slime molds and chemotaxis.
James Arthur Krumhansl was an American physicist who specialized in condensed matter physics and materials science. He spent much of his career at Cornell University. He also served as president of the American Physical Society and assistant director for mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering for the National Science Foundation. In 1987 he testified before Congress that the Superconducting Super Collider would be too costly.
Ioannis George (Yannís) Kevrekidis is currently the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering within the Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. He holds secondary appointments in the Whiting School's Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Department of Urology.
Panayotis G. Kevrekidis is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Kevrekidis earned his B.Sc. in physics in 1996 from the University of Athens. He obtained his M.S. in 1998 and Ph.D. in 2000 from Rutgers University, the latter under the joint supervision of Joel Lebowitz and Panos G. Georgopoulos. His thesis was entitled “Lattice Dynamics of Solitary Wave Excitations”. He then assumed a post-doctoral position split between the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics of Princeton University (10/2000–02/2001) and the Theoretical Division and the Center for Nonlinear Studies of Los Alamos National Laboratory (03/2001–08/2001). From 09/2001, he joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Massachusetts Amherst as an assistant professor. He was awarded tenure and promotion to associate professor in 06/2005. As of 09/2010, he is a full professor at the same institution. He is presently the Stanislaw M. Ulam Scholar at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
David Kelly Campbell is an American theoretical physicist and academic leader. His research has spanned high energy physics, condensed matter physics and nonlinear dynamics. He also served as Physics Department Head at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Dean of the College Engineering at Boston University, and Boston University Provost.
Jane M. Booker is an American statistician, formerly a research in the Statistical Sciences Group of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She is known for her work on expert elicitation and on using probability theory to formalize reasoning from fuzzy logic.
Denise Ellen Kirschner is an American mathematical biologist and immunologist whose research topics include granulomas, HIV, tuberculosis, and the mechanisms by which disease pathogens interact with and persist in their hosts. She is a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and former president of the Society for Mathematical Biology.
